Quilt 136 - Green and Pink Wall Hanging

40 x 40"

We are out at Pacific Beach doing some quilting and a little sightseeing. I made this the first night here knowing we'd be doing some driving and hiking the next day. The fabrics were a gift from my boss, a package of green and pink fat quarters. I hadn't know what I'd do with them, but one of the books we brought proved to be the right inspiration. The flowers still need to be appliqued, but we still have a couple of days.

Storms tonight again, but we are prepared. The pictures below were taken on our trip up the coast today.

Quilt 135 - Avo-Cat-O wool ornament

2009

4x6"

As a follow up to The Avocato wall hanging I made for my friend last Christmas (Quilt 119 on this blog), I ressurected this small wool version for her gift this year. This had been my first attempt at this pattern, which is Block One of Helene Knott's Garden Patch Cats called The Avocato. I had thought that making it smaller and doing a wool applique would be easier and faster, but I ended up not liking it at all and made the full size version in cotton instead.

This little wool version almost ended up the garbage can, but after all the time I spent on it, I went with my Mom's theory of "Save it! You never know..." And she was right! I pulled it out again after a year had passed and it wasn't quite the tragedy I had remembered. I put a little embroidery embellishment on it, whip stitched a back on it, took black wire from some other ill-fated craft project to make a little hanger for it and voila!

She loved it and only wished she could have a dozen more to cover her tree with! Maybe next year...

Quilt 134 - Office Wall Hangings

2009

13" x 16"

The law firm I work for moved to a different building this year, and my new office had a large blank wall that was just crying out for a wall hanging. When packing up her office, my boss found several rods from old card catalog drawers that she just couldn't bear to throw away. The moment I saw them I said "quilt hangers"!! They are only about 16" long, so I had my dimensions pretty much figured out before I started the quilts.

On a trip to Chelan, I had purchased some fat quarters that I knew would come in handy someday, but didn't really have a project in mind. They turned out to be the perfect mix of the neutral used on the walls of our new office and some bright cheery reds and pinks to liven up my office space. I used the Convergence technique and added an accent border on the bottom to make them a little longer than they are wide.

I also tried a new technique for binding, using strips on the sides and triangles in the corners, to avoid having any binding showing on the front. Fun!! I already have some other small quilts in mind so I can change them out every couple of months.

My high tech solution for mounting the rods: gold colored thumbed tacks. It would have been little cup hooks, but the drug store didn't have any, so gold thumb tacks it is!